What Is AWS Storage Gateway?

AWS Storage Gateway connects an on-premises software appliance with cloud-based storage
to provide
seamless integration with data security features between your on-premises IT environment
and
the AWS storage infrastructure. You can use the service to store data in the AWS
Cloud for
scalable and cost-effective storage that helps maintain data security.

File Gateway – A file gateway supports a file
interface into Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and combines a service
and a virtual software appliance. By
using this combination, you can store and retrieve objects in Amazon S3 using industry-standard
file protocols such as Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB).
The
software appliance, or gateway, is deployed into your on-premises environment as
a virtual
machine (VM) running on VMware ESXi or Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor. The gateway
provides
access to objects in S3 as files or file share mount points. With a file gateway,
you can
do the following:

You can store and retrieve files directly using the NFS version 3 or 4.1
protocol.

You can store and retrieve files directly using the SMB file system version, 2 and
3 protocol.

You can access your data directly in Amazon S3 from any AWS Cloud application or
service.

You can manage your Amazon S3 data using lifecycle policies, cross-region replication,
and versioning. You can think of a file gateway as a file system mount on
S3.

A file gateway simplifies file storage in Amazon S3, integrates to existing applications
through industry-standard file system protocols, and provides a cost-effective alternative
to on-premises storage. It also provides low-latency access to data through transparent
local caching. A file gateway manages data transfer to and from AWS, buffers applications
from network congestion, optimizes and streams data in parallel, and manages bandwidth
consumption. File gateways integrate with AWS services, for example with the
following:

Common access management using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Encryption using AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)

Monitoring using Amazon CloudWatch (CloudWatch)

Audit using AWS CloudTrail (CloudTrail)

Operations using the AWS Management Console and AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI)

Billing and cost management

Volume Gateway – A volume gateway provides
cloud-backed storage volumes that you can mount as Internet Small Computer System
Interface
(iSCSI) devices from your on-premises application servers. The gateway supports
the
following volume configurations:

Stored volumes – If you need low-latency
access to your entire dataset, first configure your on-premises gateway to store
all
your data locally. Then asynchronously back up point-in-time snapshots of this
data
to Amazon S3. This configuration provides durable and inexpensive offsite backups
that
you can recover to your local data center or Amazon EC2. For example, if you need
replacement capacity for disaster recovery, you can recover the backups to Amazon
EC2.

Tape Gateway – With a tape gateway, you can
cost-effectively and durably archive backup data in Glacier. A tape gateway provides
a virtual
tape infrastructure that scales seamlessly with your business needs and eliminates
the
operational burden of provisioning, scaling, and maintaining a physical tape infrastructure.

You can run AWS Storage Gateway either on-premises as a VM appliance, or in AWS as
an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
(Amazon EC2) instance. You deploy your gateway on an EC2 instance to provision iSCSI
storage
volumes in AWS. Gateways hosted on EC2 instances can be used for disaster recovery,
data
mirroring, and providing storage for applications hosted on Amazon EC2.

Are You a First-Time AWS Storage Gateway User?

In the following documentation, you can find a Getting Started section that covers
setup information common to all gateways and also gateway-specific setup sections.
The
Getting Started section shows you how to deploy, activate, and configure storage
for a
gateway. The management section shows you how to manage your gateway and
resources:

Creating a File Gateway
provides instructions on how to create and use a file gateway. It shows you how
to create a file share, map your drive to an Amazon S3 bucket, and upload files
and
folders to Amazon S3.

Creating a Volume Gateway describes how to create and
use a volume gateway. It shows you how to create storage volumes and back up
data to the volumes.

Creating a Tape Gateway
provides instructions on how to create and use a tape gateway. It shows you how
to back up data to virtual tapes and archive the tapes.

In this guide, you can primarily find how to work with gateway operations by using
the
AWS Management Console. If you want to perform these operations programmatically,
see the AWS Storage Gateway API Reference.

AWS Storage Gateway Pricing

For current information about pricing, see Pricing on the AWS Storage Gateway
details page.

To deploy Storage Gateway, you first need to decide on the following two things:

Your storage solution – Choose from one
of the following storage solutions:

File Gateway – You can use a
file gateway to ingest files to Amazon S3 for use by object-based workloads and
for cost-effective storage for traditional backup applications. You can also
use it to tier on-premises file storage to S3. You can cost-effectively and
durably store and retrieve your on-premises objects in Amazon S3 using
industry-standard file protocols.

Volume Gateway – Using volume
gateways, you can create storage volumes in the AWS Cloud. Your on-premises
applications can access these as Internet Small Computer System Interface
(iSCSI) targets. There are two options—cached and stored
volumes.

With cached volumes, you store volume data in AWS, with a small
portion of recently accessed data in the cache on-premises. This approach
enables low-latency access to your frequently accessed dataset. It also
provides seamless access to your entire dataset stored in AWS. By using
cached volumes, you can scale your storage resource without having to
provision additional hardware.

With stored volumes, you store the entire set of volume data
on-premises and store periodic point-in-time backups (snapshots) in AWS. In
this model, your on-premises storage is primary, delivering low-latency
access to your entire dataset. AWS storage is the backup that you can
restore in the event of a disaster in your data center.

Tape Gateway – If you are
looking for a cost-effective, durable, long-term, offsite alternative for
data archiving, deploy a tape gateway. With its virtual tape library (VTL)
interface, you can use your existing tape-based backup software
infrastructure to store data on virtual tape cartridges that you create. For
more information, see Supported Third-Party Backup
Applications for a Tape Gateway. When you archive
tapes, you don't worry about managing tapes on your premises and arranging
shipments of tapes offsite. For an architectural overview, see Tape Gateways.

Hosting option – You can run Storage Gateway
either on-premises as a VM appliance, or in AWS as an Amazon EC2 instance. For more
information, see Requirements. If
your data center goes offline and you don't have an available host, you can deploy
a
gateway on an EC2 instance. Storage Gateway provides an Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
that
contains the gateway VM image.

Additionally, as you configure a host to deploy a gateway software appliance, you
need to
allocate sufficient storage for the gateway VM.

Before you continue to the next step, make sure that you have done the following:

For a gateway deployed on-premises, you chose the type of host, VMware ESXi
Hypervisor or Microsoft Hyper-V. and set it up. For more information, see Requirements. If you deploy the gateway
behind a firewall, make sure that ports are accessible to the gateway VM. For more
information, see Requirements.